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The Guardian’s at it again

The Guardian is at it again. It has published yet another article by David Shariatmadari on how a ‘leading barrister’ says ‘Sharia is compatible with human rights’. If you read the article though, it hard to find much evidence on how it is compatible other than that this is the barrister’s ‘interpretation’.

So we’re back to the ‘interpretation’ argument and also of course the bogus ‘not in the Koran’ argument.

Listen up Guardian: Sharia law is based on the Koran but also the Hadith and Islamic jurisprudence so whilst ‘not in the Koran’ might be a helpful PR exercise, it’s not very upstanding journalism, now is it?

It’s disturbing that ‘leading’ barristers and newspapers can say Sharia is compatible with human rights whilst it amputates, stones to death, imposes veiling, and kills apostates as we speak.

The best line of the whole puff piece though has to be: ‘only about half a dozen allow for amputations’. Only?!!

David is the Guardian paying you to write this crap or the Islamic regime of Iran? Oh I forgot, same difference…

He uses the “not in the Qur’an” argument when it suits him, though when it comes to things that are in the Qur’an (cutting off the hands of thieves) he says ignores that and instead says it’s not practiced in most Muslim countries. Funny how they will use whatever example suits them at the time without ever being consistent!

I’m impressed; Mr. Ahmadinejad’s standard of written English is certainly improving. Maybe it’s the stoning off-season in Iran and he has some time on his hands. Maybe Lauren Booth does the proof-reading.

Why the literal approach to ‘Islam means peace’ but a non-literal approach to the Koran/the Hadith? If the Koran/Hadith has to be interpreted in context, then so does ‘Islam means peace': it has to be interpreted in the context of Islam not being peaceful.

And why the tangent of discussing the basis for the barbarity (‘religious and cultural diversion’)? It’s still barbarity.

Is this not standard for all religions? Picking and choosing those parts which suit is the normal practise used in control and justifcation. It is time that all religions, superstions and their beliefs were banned from the law.

The idea of human rights is a Western one, so, yes, the West defines it, obviously. Islam knows nothing about it. Islam only knows about doing the will of its insane monomaniac deity. No rights are possible.

Rights are universal and not western. many people understand and desire and demand rights and freedoms even if they have never left their tiny village or major city outside of the west. Yes Islam and all religions violate rights but this has nothing to do with 21 century people who find themselves often at odds with religious edits, particularly the young who are a moajority of the population in a place like Iran. I’ve said this before but it is interesting how nuclear techonology is not western but rights are!?

Well, science and technology are empirically verifiable. All science converges on the same answers because of that. Human rights? Not so much–they are derived from individuals and cultures, and vary from place to place.

I agree that people all over the world deserve rights, and I’d like to see my ideas, and those of people I agree with, promulgated, but it would be foolish to pretend that various traditions of rights don’t have historical and cultural origins.

My point, Maryam, is about the concept of human rights, the very idea that such a concept is a valid one, not about rights per se. If the idea is valid, then of course human rights are universal. But the argument is a moral one, and is challenged by monotheists: (1) god is the source of morality (2) morality means obey god; ideed, it can’t mean anything else, so monotheism is in every way opposed to human rights, even though in practice some attenuated concept of personal rights is always found attached to those in authority (e.g. men).

Soloway’s point is different again: it’s using the argument from moral relativism: “hands off our culture, we have our own ideas of ‘right’.” My point was that the culture he is defending has no such concept. And of course, if the idea of human rights is valid, then it applies to every person on the planet regardless of whether they have the concept or not. And (to cut a long story short) I am unable to see how it is not valid. Nevertheless, we will have to go on defending it for a very long time yet.

Do you mean like the right to practice your religion? The right for a man to marry several wives? The right to dress modestly. The right to defend your household?

The word “rights” is simply a gateway word and very open-ended. The fact that people hang on it like it was invented by an enemy to manipulate is absurd and immature.

Quite frankly I simply can’t think of another word to describe what a person should be able to do or have than the word “right”. But if I could I’m sure you’d only latch on to that one too and twist it around to make it seem dirty.

PersianPower, your post was a veritable tour-de-force of eloquence, cogency and irrefutable argumentation.

I would love to meet you personally, because you could then further enlighten me, and because after you are done elightening me I could smash something heavy on your thick skull. Maybe a good shake-up of your neurons could turn you into a human being.

It’s disturbing that ‘leading’ barristers and newspapers can say Sharia is compatible with human rights whilst it amputates, stones to death, imposes veiling, and kills apostates as we speak.

If the proposed courts in England, which would only deal with civil law, so couldn’t impose the repellent punishments you mention, return verdicts compatible with Emglish law and civil rights, does it matter whether they call themselves sharia courts or not?

But our point is that Sharia’s civil law is just as scandalous as its criminal law. just because people are not being stoned to death but women are being rights in the family, doesn’t make it any better. The letter explains how this is so – from the fact that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s or its leniency towards marital rape and domestic violence and so on. What we are trying to explain is that it contradicts laws that have been fought for and secured by progressive social and women’s rights movements. So it can’t be accomodated.

That doesn’t matter. No religious law should be used, enforced, or given a platform on which to bring suit by a secular government.

If people want to agree to a set of rules by which their culture will abide, so be it, as long as this does not break real laws. Anyone who decides they want out of observing such cultural laws should be protected.

There should be no legal recognition of such extra-legal laws and courts, be they founded on Islamic Sharia, Jewish laws, Sikh customs, or whatever. And the U.S., especially, needs to purge existing Christian-centric laws from the books.

Even in a 100% religiously-unified country, the law should be secular. Religious matters should be left to the observation of individuals unless they come into conflict with secular law.

They are not courts except by the most generous definition. They are arbitration tribunals. Their decisions only stand if accepted by all parties. If they function openly they must follow English law and can be appealed against to English courts. It doesn’t matter whether they call themselves sharia or not. In fact, by offering a different kind of ‘sharia’, they may damage the claims to superiority of hardline sharia. The problem comes with unrecognosed and unsupervised self-proclaimed courts with no control over them.